Notes

From: http://www.history.org/almanack/people/bios/biowythe.htm
"George Wythe's signature is first among the Virginia signatures
on the Declaration of Independence. Wythe was greatly respected
by his fellow Virginians. Wythe was absent from that meeting and
the other delegates left a space so that his signature would
appear first.

"No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than
George Wythe," Thomas Jefferson wrote. "His virtue was of the
purest tint; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of
warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was to liberty, and the
natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the
Cato of his country. "

Jefferson learned the law from Wythe (pronounced "with"), and,
in a manner of speaking, Wythe's signature on the Declaration
was a teacher's endorsement of his pupil's finest brief.

If Wythe had accomplished nothing more than signing the
Declaration and teaching Jefferson, he would have earned a place
in history, but his life was crowded with achievement. He was,
among other things, Virginia's foremost classical scholar, dean
of its lawyers, a Williamsburg alderman and mayor, a member of
the House of Burgesses, and house clerk. He was the colony's
attorney general, a delegate to the Continental Congress,
speaker of the state assembly, the nation's first college law
professor, Virginia's chancellor, and a framer of the federal
Constitution.

Among Wythe's other law pupils were John Marshall, perhaps the
greatest chief justice of the United States, and St. George
Tucker. When Wythe was Virginia's chancellor, Henry Clay was his
assistant.

George Wythe was born in 1726 at Chesterville in what is now
Hampton, Virginia, to Thomas and Margaret Walker Wythe. His
father, a planter, died soon after. Wythe was reared by his
mother and may have received his early education from her.

Margaret Wythe instilled in her son a love of learning that
served him all his life. Even as an old man Wythe took up new
subjects, teaching himself Hebrew, for example. George Wythe
read law with his uncle Stephen Dewey who lived near Petersburg.

Admitted to the colony's General Court bar in 1746, Wythe
practiced at first in Elizabeth City County and later with the
prominent lawyer Zachary Lewis. In 1747 Wythe married Zachary's
daughter Ann.

Wythe was admitted to the York County bar on January 16, 1748.
Ann Wythe died on August 8 of that year. The widower was
appointed clerk to the Committee of Privileges and Elections of
the House of Burgesses in October.

He was elected a burgess for Williamsburg in 1754, and soon he
married Elizabeth Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver). She was the
daughter of planter and builder Richard Taliaferro, who built
what is now called the George Wythe House about 1755, and also
made substantial repairs and additions to the Governor's Palace
about 1752.

Taliaferro gave the couple life rights to the house.

When the House of Burgesses sent Attorney General Peyton
Randolph to England as its agent in 1753, Wythe succeeded him,
but resigned the office in Randolph's favor after Randolph
returned in 1755. Wythe remained a Williamsburg burgess until
1758, when he was elected the burgess for the College of William
and Mary. He represented the college until 1761, when he was
elected for Elizabeth City County.

An early opponent of the Stamp Act, Wythe was appointed to the
Committee of Petition and Remonstrance in 1764 and drafted the
remonstrance to the House of Commons that protested against the
tax. Nevertheless, Wythe, like Peyton Randolph and others,
opposed freshman burgess Patrick Henry's stormy resolves against
the act the next year, regarding them as redundant and ill
timed.

Jefferson met Wythe during Fauquier's administration. They were
introduced by Professor William Small of William and Mary. Wythe
in turn introduced Jefferson to Fauquier, who invited the young
man to play his violin in a Palace amateur quartet. Soon Small,
Wythe, Fauquier, and Jefferson often made a party of four at
Palace dinners, where science, politics, morals and the like
were ordinary topics of conversation.

Wythe was appointed to William and Mary's board in 1768, and on
December 1 of that year he was elected Williamsburg's mayor. He
became a vestryman of Bruton Parish Church in 1760 and was
appointed clerk of the House of Burgesses on July 16, 1769.
After the burgesses ordered that the Public Hospital be built in
1770, they named Wythe one of its trustees. He remained house
clerk until 1775, when he was elected a delegate to the Second
Continental Congress.

At the Congress another member of the Virginia delegation,
Richard Henry Lee, rose on instructions from the Virginia
Convention in Williamsburg and moved for American independence.
Jefferson's declaration was approved July 4, but the document
was not engrossed and ready for signing until August 2. By that
time, Wythe had returned to Williamsburg; absent delegates
signed afterward. Below Wythe's name appear the signatures, in
order, of: Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin
Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Carter
Braxton.

Though 50 years old, Wythe proposed to fight in the Revolution,
but his service was in government. He worked on the drafting of
the first Virginia constitution, written mostly by George Mason,
and served with Jefferson, Mason, Thomas Ludwell Lee, and Edmund
Pendleton on the committee that revised the state's laws. He
also was one of two members who designed the state seal. It
shows Virtue, sword in hand, with her foot on the prostrate form
of Tyranny, whose crown lays nearby. The motto, "Sic Semper
Tyrannis," may be translated, "Thus Ever to Tyrants."

In 1777 Wythe was elected speaker of the Virginia House of
Delegates. Two years later he accepted appointment as professor
of law and police in now-Governor Jefferson's reorganization of
the College of William and Mary. It was the first such
professorship in the nation. After the government moved to
Richmond in 1780, Wythe taught classes, presided over moot
courts, and conducted mock legislatures in the old Capitol.

Elizabeth Wythe died in 1787. Long a foe of slavery, George
Wythe freed several slaves, including Lydia Broadnax; others he
conveyed to Taliaferro relatives. Lydia chose to remain in
Wythe's service.

Wythe accepted law students as boarders in his home and treated
them as if they were the sons he had not had. His kindness was
returned by admiring pupils like Jefferson, who called him "my
faithful and beloved Mentor in youth, and my most affectionate
friend through life."

Late in the1780s, student William Munford preserved a glimpse of
Wythe's domestic establishment. "Old as he is," Munford wrote,
"his habit is, every morning, winter and summer, to rise before
the sun, go to the well in the yard, draw several buckets of
water, and fill the reservoir for his shower bath, and then,
drawing the cord, let the water fall over him in a glorious
shower. Many a time have I heard him catching his breath and
almost shouting with the shock. When he entered the breakfast
room his face would be in a glow, and all his nerves were fully
braced."

Wythe quit the college in 1789 in a dispute with the
administration and accepted appointment as judge of Virginia's
Court of Chancery in Richmond. He moved there in 1791, turning
his house over to Taliaferro's heir, who died in 1792. William
and Mary's president, the Reverend James Madison, bought the
home in 1792.

Chancellor Wythe took the opportunity of one of his cases to try
to cripple the institution of slavery. He ruled that Virginia's
Declaration of Rights--written by Mason and adopted in
1776--included African-Americans among the "all men" born free
and equally independent. They should, Wythe said, be considered
free until proven otherwise. His ruling did not survive appeals.

Nearing the end of his life, Wythe wrote his will in favor of a
grandnephew, George Wythe Sweeney, but with generous bequests to
his former slaves Mathew Brown and Lydia Broadnax. A
ne'er-do-well, Sweeney forged checks against Wythe's accounts to
cover pressing debts. Hoping to avoid detection and to inherit
under the will, he resorted to murder by poison. Strawberries or
coffee seem to have been the vehicle. Brown died within days,
but Wythe endured two weeks of agony. As he lay dying, Sweeney's
forgeries were discovered and Wythe revised his will.

A grand jury indicted Sweeney for murder. Sweeney went free. All
evidence was circumstantial. No witness was able to testify that
he saw Sweeney poison the food. African-American Lydia Broadnax
may have been in the kitchen when the food was poisoned, but she
was not allowed to testify against a white person in court.

Wythe is buried at St. John's Church in Richmond, the church in
which Patrick Henry made his "Liberty or Death" speech."
George Wythe House:
http://www.history.org/Almanack/places/hb/hbwythe.htm

From http://www.earlyrepublic.net/BIOG-W.htm Wythe, George 1726
- 1806: After an active career in the Revolution, he took the
first chair of law in an American college, namely William and
Mary. After 1790, he resigned this position to conduct his own
law school. Among his students were Henry Clay, John Marshall,
and William Branch Giles.

Clerk of the Virginia House of Burgesses
Delegate to the First Continental Congress
Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates
First Professor of Law
Delegate to the Second Continental Congress
Chancellor of Virginia
Member of the Constitutional Convention
Signer of the Declaration of Independence